At a time when Uttarakhand has been ravaged by floods and landslides, Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna's stewardship of the state has come under scrutiny. And it's not just the state administration's below-par response that has caused public outrage.

The advertisement blitzkrieg it launched as part of an image makeover drive has only ended up adding salt to the wounds of the affected families.

As with its relief operations in the state, the Bahuguna government could not even get the ads right as they were marked by spelling errors and have been described as "downright crass and insensitive".

The first advertisement, carried by news dailies on Monday, contained photographs of a smiling UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Chief Minister Bahuguna. Only Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in the mug-shot, did not betray any emotion.

At a time when there is widespread gloom and despair over the havoc wreaked on large parts of Uttarakhand by the calamity, the photographs of the two smiling leaders stood out like a sore thumb.

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Realising that it had committed a major goof-up, the state information and public relations department, the brain behind the publicity drive, replaced the photographs of the smiling leaders with a new set, in which the Congress president and the chief minister were shown in a sombre mood.

But the photograph of a smiling Yashpal Arya, the disaster management minister in the Uttarakhand government, was introduced, making a mockery of the entire campaign.

Despite Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde's advice to VIPs not to visit Uttarakhand, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi went ahead with his tour of the flood-hit state

The ads also contained dramatic errors. On the first day, Uttarakhand was spelled as "Uttrakhand" and "relief measures" as "relief measurers". While the spelling of the state's name was corrected in the advertisements published on Tuesday, there was no change as far as "relief measurers" was concerned.

The text of the advertisements makes tall claims about state government conducting the relief operations with gusto, with the cooperation of army, IAF and paramilitary forces. But the four photographs included in the ads show the army, BRO, IAF at work. The state administration is conspicuous by its absence.

"Obviously, there was no application of mind while drafting the ad content," said BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, adding: "They display complete insensitivity and indifference on the part of the state government and the Congress party, and are in poor taste. The rescue operations have not even been completed. Several families are still waiting for their near and dear ones to return. But the Congress, and the government led by it, has already started claiming credit for the relief work. Money is being splurged on the ad-campaign and Yuvraaj Rahul Gandhi's photo-ops."